Saturday, May 13, 2017

Love Embodiments

A mother has no need for praise, no more than spring has or a rose in bloom.

She is, above all else, love's embodiment, and love seeks no praise for it needs none: it desires only to do its lovely duty.

A
mother is the vessel through which love's duty is performed,
manifesting itself in the simplest chore as well as in the greatest
sacrifice: the made-up bed to self-denial for others.

Love is a
mother's instinct, her magnificent gift from nature which in turn
becomes a measureless and an inexhaustible fount of giving. It is the
profound theme running the very width and breadth of nature.

I
observed a mother recently performing her instinctive duties in a
profound and graceful manner. It seemed the grand symbol of the essence
of motherhood.

From a window I watched as she busily brought in
food to her three infants and hastily carried out the trash, and when
this work was done for a while, she sat on guard nearby ready to defend
to her death against any harm that came toward her kin.

Then
thunder roared overhead and lighting streaked and rain began to pour,
but fast as had been the lightning streak, the mother cardinal was in
her nest hovered over her three babies not two weeks old and not a rain
drop would touch them.

Turning upward her red-tipped beak as if in
a show of pride, the mother bird puffed out her breast and spread her
feathers, making a perfectly warm and dry embrace for her young.

The
rain poured and splattered about her and a steady stream found its way
through the leaves and limbs that cradled her nest, but she seemed not
the least perturbed by it.

Even when the wind began wrenching the
bush that held her and her young, the mother cardinal moved not a single
feather. She surely would have clung to the nest even if it had been
blown to the ground where the flooding rain water likely would drowned
her.

The
next day the sun was bright and hot, and the mother puffed up her
feathers to allow the coolness of a soft breeze to touch her young.

And
as if she had a built in clock that signaled feeding time she would fly
off and return with some morsel for hungry mouths, never gone long
enough or far enough for the nest to be without ample protection.